360 results for: Visual Arts
Painting of the Great Seattle Fire and Mount Rainier by B. J. Harnett, 1889
Seattle’s Great Fire occurred on June 6, 1889, in a carpenter shop at 1st Avenue and Madison Street. The story goes that a workman, John Back, was melting glue in a pot that boiled over onto the floor, igniting wood shavings and sawdust. The fire quickly grew, and flames swept out through the shop’s open doors and windows, spreading to…
ID Number:1959.1721
Date:1889
Oil painting, "Port Townsend," by Harriet Foster Beecher, 1870-1915
Born in Indiana, Harriet Foster Beecher (1853-1918) traveled to the West Coast to attend the San Francisco School of Design. She moved to Seattle in 1880 and married Captain Herbert Foote Beecher. In 1881, Beecher opened what is thought to be Seattle’s first art studio. She painted Indigenous life in oils and watercolors, portraits of Seattle pioneers, and landscapes. Beecher…
ID Number:1959.1762.2
Date:1870-1915
Painting, "Panoramic View of the Olympic Mountains," by Emily Inez Denny, 1894
The daughter of one of Seattle’s founding families, Emily Inez Denny (1853 – 1918) was both a painter and writer. Greatly influenced by seeing the drawings of Sarah Willoughby as a student at the Washington Territorial University, she took on painting as a life-long pursuit. This painting is a grandly romantic view of native people in a pristine landscape. Five…
ID Number:1959.1762.3
Date:1894
Oil painting of an Indigenous camp on Lake Union by Emily Inez Denny, 1886
The daughter of one of Seattle’s founding families, Emily Inez Denny (1853 – 1918) was both a painter and writer. Greatly influenced by seeing the drawings of Sarah Willoughby as a student at the Washington Territorial University, she took on painting as a life-long pursuit. In her 1909 book, “Blazing the Way,” Denny writes of an imagined scene from 1851:…
ID Number:1959.1791.2
Date:1886
Oil painting of Lake Washington with Cascade Range in background by Emily Inez Denny, 1870-1918
The daughter of one of Seattle’s founding families, Emily Inez Denny (1853–1918) was both a painter and writer. Greatly influenced by seeing the drawings of Sarah Willoughby as a student at the Washington Territorial University, she took on painting as a life-long pursuit. A woman who thrived on the creation of art, she constantly traveled with a notebook so she…
ID Number:1959.1791.3
Date:1870-1918
Portrait of William H. Shoudy by unknown artist, ca. 1850-1900
William H. Shoudy was an early settler in Seattle, emigrating by covered wagon from Illinois in a party led by Thomas Mercer. Riding a wave of anti-Chinese sentiments that culminated in race riots, Shoudy was elected Mayor as representative of the People's Party in 1886. The People's Party supported the expulsion of all people of Chinese ancestry from Seattle, narrowly…
ID Number:1960.1854.1
Date:Circa 1850-1900
Oil portrait of Henry Yesler by unknown artist, ca. 1850-1890
On July 8, 1885, voters elected Henry Yesler (1810-1892) as mayor of the City of Seattle. Yesler had served a previous one-year term beginning in 1874. His total education consisted of a few years in a log-cabin school, but when he arrived in Seattle in 1852, he turned the place into a real town instead of a collection of a…
ID Number:1960.1924
Date:Circa 1850-1890
Oil portrait of Joshua Green and Dwight Merrill by Charles J. Fox, ca. 1950
Joshua Green (1869–1975) was a sternwheeler captain, businessman, and eventually an established banker, purchasing the Peoples Savings Bank in Seattle in 1925. He changed the name to Peoples Bank and Trust Co. two years later. Richard Dwight (R.D.) Merrill (1869-1964), came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1890's to establish timber holdings. His father had formed the Merrill and Ring…
ID Number:1960.1963
Date:Circa 1950
Oil portrait of Emil George Sick by Charles J. Fox, ca. 1950
Emil George Sick was born in 1894 in Tacoma, Washington, and died in Seattle in 1964. He was best known for being a successful brewery industrialist (Sicks Rainier Brewing Company and others), and owner of Seattle's baseball team, the Rainiers, which he purchased in 1937. A year later, he built the now demolished baseball stadium that beared his name: Sick…
ID Number:1960.1965
Date:Circa 1950
Vignette of Mt. Rainier, painted and exhibited at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE), 1909
This piece was made by Mrs. Addie V. Hoxie, who was born in Pennsylvania and came to Seattle around 1898. She worked at several department stores including The Bon Marché where she was employed in the Art Department. Mrs. Hoxie exhibited a silk thread work at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and devoted her life to teaching silk thread…
ID Number:1960.2021.3
Date:1909